I got to know Professor Lambert while I was at the University of Birmingham between 1995 and 2005. He was unfailingly gracious and kind-spirited though I must admit to thinking him, at times, a little eccentric. He was a regular in the coffee room in the Arts Building and I remember many interesting conversations with him there. He would always try to get to our Biblical Studies colloquium and on one occasion presented a paper. I used to have to make a special effort to tell him about the colloquium because he never embraced email; everything was done the old-fashioned way.

I knew about his Christadelphian affiliations and remember his disdain for a lot of modern medicine, and especially modern drugs. I had not realized until reading the obituary, though, that he was so thoroughly Brummy, born in Erdington, at King Edward's High School in Edgbaston (where many a great classicist studied) and so on. Nor did I know that he was a conscientious objector during the war.

The obituary has a little (but important) mistake:

His knowledge of ancient eastern history could not be bettered and in January 2010 Prof Lambert and colleague Dr Irving Finkel identified pieces from a cuneiform tablet that was inscribed with the same text as the Cyrus Cylinder, a clay artefact dating from 6 BC praising the rule of Babylon monarch King Cyrus The Great.